Taking digital pictures with a digital camera, and subsequently manipulating them using a computing device, has proven to be a popular activity with users. One type of application involves selecting a number of digital pictures for inclusion on a page template. A page template typically defines a background, and in the prior art, usually specifies a static number of positions at which digital pictures or other types of digital content objects, such as text or clipart, can be placed. After population of the digital page template with digital images, a user may print out the resulting page to share. A number of such pages populated with digital pictures may be printed in book form, for instance, to provide a user with a unique and custom product by which to share his or her digital pictures.
A difficulty with existing page templates is that they are typically static. That is, a given page template usually statically defines the number of digital pictures that can be placed on the page, as well as their locations and/or sizes. To provide users with a rich ability to place different numbers of photos at different locations and with different sizes on a given page, a page template designer may therefore have to create hundreds, if not more, of different page templates. Even then, users may still want to place their digital pictures in a way that is not provided by any of these different page templates. Thus, current approaches for existing page templates result in the page template designer having to engage in often tedious work to create large numbers of page templates, while potentially still not satisfying the expectations and needs of users.